Unwritten Memories

Fülszöveg

For the first time, Thomas Mann's wife of over fifty
years breaks her long silence, recounting their life to-
gether in a warm and fascinating book that brings alive
a man, a marriage, a whole artistic and intellectual
world.
In a voice full of generosity and humor, quick to the
epigram and the telling detail, Katia Mann reminisces.
About how they met (he knew her face from a painting
he had clipped from the local newspaper without know-
ing who she was—but he was actually and instantly
smitten when he saw her arguing "like a fury" with a
streetcar conductor). About their marriage, despite her
father's hesitation ("Writing's sort of frivolous, isn't
it?") and despite her own initial misgivings, overcome
by determined wooing and passionate love letters ("He
could write, you know!"). About the local reaction to
Buddenbrooks ("a bird who soils his own nest"). About
his relationships with his brother Heinrich and with
their gifted, beautiful, half-Brazilian mother.... Tovább

Fülszöveg

For the first time, Thomas Mann's wife of over fifty
years breaks her long silence, recounting their life to-
gether in a warm and fascinating book that brings alive
a man, a marriage, a whole artistic and intellectual
world.
In a voice full of generosity and humor, quick to the
epigram and the telling detail, Katia Mann reminisces.
About how they met (he knew her face from a painting
he had clipped from the local newspaper without know-
ing who she was—but he was actually and instantly
smitten when he saw her arguing "like a fury" with a
streetcar conductor). About their marriage, despite her
father's hesitation ("Writing's sort of frivolous, isn't
it?") and despite her own initial misgivings, overcome
by determined wooing and passionate love letters ("He
could write, you know!"). About the local reaction to
Buddenbrooks ("a bird who soils his own nest"). About
his relationships with his brother Heinrich and with
their gifted, beautiful, half-Brazilian mother. About his
friendships and disputes with other writers, his anti-
Nazism and the German response to it.
She recalls the glittering prewar artistic world to
which she and her husband were central—and their long
friendships with Bruno Walter, Hermann Hesse,
Gustav Mahler, André Gide, Albert Einstein, Aldous
Huxley, Franz Werfel, Arnold Schonberg, Charlie
Chaplin (his stories made Mann laugh until he cried)____
We discover which characters and situations in
Mann's works were drawn from actual events or people;
how Katia's visit to a Swiss spa for treatment inspired
The Magic Mountain (she sent him letters full of con-
tinuing vignettes of people he had been struck with
while visiting her); how his fascination with a little
Polish boy and his family in Venice prompted Death in
Venice ( Mann received a letter years later from a
(continued on back flap)
(continued from front flap)
Polish aristocrat who recognized the portrait of him-
self and his sisters). . . .
From Munich to Switzerland, then Princeton, and,
finally, on to California—we are with the Manns through
two wars, to Stockholm and the Nobel Prize, through
his tragic breaks with friends who became more and
more allied with German nationalism, up through the
years in California, when he was denounced as a Com-
munist during the Hollywood Red Scare. His working
habits, his favorite writers, his closest friendships and
happiest moments—he is portrayed as only his wife,
Katia, could portray him. And her own vivid memories
are given added dimension by the interjections of two
of the Mann children: Erika and Golo.
Thomas Mann, the extraordinary and complicated
human being—the writer, the encouraging mentor to
young writers, the devoted husband and father, the
saddened German—from his youth through his literary
triumphs and his tragic exile, is here recalled with enor-
mous charm and love in a memoir that comes from a
born storyteller.
Michael Mann, the youngest son of Thomas and Katia
Mann, is currently Professor of German Language and
Literature at the University of California at Berkeley.
Elisabeth Plessen is a short-story writer who lives
in Germany. Vissza